I beleave that "free" music is going to be the way of the future. Because file sharing programs, with encription, can be created fairly easily and posted as "open source code", nothing will be able to stop it. You may have an ever so slight chance if you could get ALL hardware devices to have something to help you, but what about all the "old" hardware (I personally have several computers sitting in the closet that work great, they're just outdated - but good enough for ripping some mp3s). You'll never get ALL hardware to be in compliance, therefore you can't stop it.

It seems to me that if I'm a musician & millions of people like what I'm doing and visit my web site frequently, that I would be able to work some kind of deal with advertisers. I would also be able to tour and pack stadiums at $30-60 USD a pop. Seems like there are ways for musicians to make money eventhough people are getting "free" music.